PREREQUISITES TO SOCIALISM
Marxism turned Socialism into a science. This does not prevent some
"Marxians" from turning Marxism into a Utopia.
[Trotzky then proceeds to find logical flaws in the arguments of N.
Roshkov, a Russian Marxist, who had made the assertion that Russia
was not yet ripe for Socialism, as her level of industrial technique
and the class-consciousness of her working masses were not yet high
enough to make Socialist production and distribution possible. Then
he goes back to what he calls "prerequisites to Socialism," which in
his opinion are: (1) development of industrial technique; (2)
concentration of production; (3) social consciousness of the masses.
In order that Socialism become possible, he says, it is not
necessary that each of these prerequisites be developed to its
logically conceivable limit.]
All those processes (development of technique, concentration of
production, growth of mass-consciousness) go on simultaneously, and not
only do they help and stimulate each other, but they also _hamper and
limit_ each other's development. Each of the processes of a higher order
presupposes the development of another process of a lower order, yet the
full development of any of them is incompatible with the full
development of the others.
The logical limit of technical development is undoubtedly a perfect
automatic mechanism which takes in raw materials from natural resources
and lays them down at the feet of men as ready objects of consumption.
Were not capitalism limited by relations between classes and by the
consequences of those relations, the class struggle, one would be
warranted in his assumption that industrial technique, having approached
the ideal of one great automatic mechanism within the limits of
capitalistic economy, _eo ipso_ dismisses capitalism.
The concentration of production which is an outgrowth of economic
competition has an inherent tendency to throw the entire population into
the working class. Taking this tendency apart from all the others, one
would be warranted in his assumption that capitalism would ultimately
turn the majority of the people into a reserve army of paupers, lodged
in prisons. This process, however, is being checked by revolutionary
changes which are inevitable under a certain relationship between social
forces. It will be checked long before it has reached its logical limit.
And the same thing is true in relation to social mass-consciousness.
This consciousness undoubtedly grows with the experiences of every day
struggle and through the conscious efforts of Socialist parties.
Isolating this process from all others, we can imagine it reaching a
stage where the overwhelming majority of the people are encompassed by
professional and political organizations, united in a feeling of
solidarity and in identity of purpose. Were this process allowed to grow
quantitatively without changing in quality, Socialism might be
established peacefully, through a unanimous compact of the citizens of
the twenty-first or twenty-second Century. The historic prerequisites to
Socialism, however, do not develop in isolation from each other; _they
limit each other_; reaching a certain stage, which is determined by many
circumstances, but which is very far from their mathematical limits,
they undergo a qualitative change, and in their complex combination they
produce what we call a Social revolution.
Let us take the last mentioned process, the growth of social
mass-consciousness. This growth takes place not in academies, but in the
very life of modern capitalistic society, on the basis of incessant
class struggle. The growth of proletarian class consciousness makes
class struggles undergo a transformation; it deepens them; it puts a
foundation of principle under them, thus provoking a corresponding
reaction on the part of the governing classes. The struggle between
proletariat and bourgeoisie has its own logic; it must become more and
more acute and bring things to a climax long before the time when
concentration of production has become predominant in economic life. It
is evident, further, that the growth of the political consciousness of
the proletariat is closely related with its numerical strength;
proletarian dictatorship presupposes great numbers of workingmen, strong
enough to overcome the resistance of the bourgeois counter-revolution.
This, however, does not imply that the overwhelming majority of the
people must consist of proletarians, or that the overwhelming majority
of proletarians must consist of convinced Socialists. Of course, the
fighting revolutionary army of the proletariat must by all means be
stronger than the fighting counter-revolutionary army of capital; yet
between those two camps there may be a great number of doubtful or
indifferent elements who are not actively helping the revolution, but
are rather inclined to desire its ultimate victory. The proletarian
policy must take all this into account.
This is possible only where there is a hegemony of industry over
agriculture, and a hegemony of the city over the village.
Let us review the prerequisites to Socialism in the order of their
diminishing generality and increasing complexity.
1. Socialism is not only a problem of equal distribution, but also a
problem of well organized production. Socialistic, i.e., cooeperative
production on a large scale is possible only where economic progress has
gone so far as to make a large undertaking more productive than a small
one. The greater the advantages of a large undertaking over a small one,
i.e., the higher the industrial technique, the greater must be the
economic advantages of socialized production, the higher, consequently,
must be the cultural level of the people to enable them to enjoy equal
distribution based on well organized production.
This first prerequisite of Socialism has been in existence for many
years. Ever since division of labor has been established in
manufactories; ever since manufactories have been superseded by
factories employing a system of machines,--large undertakings become
more and more profitable, and consequently their socialization would
make the people more prosperous. There would have been no gain in making
all the artisans' shops common property of the artisans; whereas the
seizure of a manufactory by its workers, or the seizure of a factory by
its hired employees, or the seizure of all means of modern production by
the people must necessarily improve their economic conditions,--the more
so, the further the process of economic concentration has advanced.
At present, social division of labor on one hand, machine production on
the other have reached a stage where the only cooeperative organization
that can make adequate use of the advantages of collectivist economy, is
the State. It is hardly conceivable that Socialist production would
content itself with the area of the state. Economic and political
motives would necessarily impel it to overstep the boundaries of
individual states.
The world has been in possession of technical equipment for collective
production--in one or another form--for the last hundred or two hundred
years. _Technically_, Socialism is profitable not only on a national,
but also to a large extent on an international scale. Why then have all
attempts at organizing Socialist communities failed? Why has
concentration of production manifested its advantages all through the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries not in Socialistic, but in
capitalistic forms? The reason is that there was no social force ready
and able to introduce Socialism.
2. Here we pass from the prerequisite of industrial technique to the
_socio-economic_ prerequisite, which is less general, but more complex.
Were our society not an antagonistic society composed of classes, but a
homogeneous partnership of men consciously selecting the best economic
system, a mere calculation as to the advantages of Socialism would
suffice to make people start Socialistic reconstruction. Our society,
however, harbors in itself opposing interests. What is good for one
class, is bad for another. Class selfishness clashes against class
selfishness; class selfishness impairs the interests of the whole. To
make Socialism possible, a social power has to arise in the midst of the
antagonistic classes of capitalist society, a power objectively placed
in a position to be interested in the establishment of Socialism, at
the same time strong enough to overcome all opposing interests and
hostile resistance. It is one of the principal merits of scientific
Socialism to have discovered such a social power in the person of the
proletariat, and to have shown that this class, growing with the growth
of capitalism, can find its salvation only in Socialism; that it is
being moved towards Socialism by its very position, and that the
doctrine of Socialism in the presence of a capitalist society must
necessarily become the ideology of the proletariat.
How far, then, must the social differentiation have gone to warrant the
assertion that the second prerequisite is an accomplished fact? In other
words, what must be the numerical strength of the proletariat? Must it
be one-half, two-thirds, or nine-tenths of the people? It is utterly
futile to try and formulate this second prerequisite of Socialism
arithmetically. An attempt to express the strength of the proletariat in
mere numbers, besides being schematic, would imply a series of
difficulties. Whom should we consider a proletarian? Is the
half-paupered peasant a proletarian? Should we count with the
proletariat those hosts of the city reserve who, on one hand, fall into
the ranks of the parasitic proletariat of beggars and thieves, and, on
the other hand, fill the streets in the capacity of peddlers, i.e., of
parasites on the economic body as a whole? It is not easy to answer
these questions.
The importance of the proletariat is based not only on its numbers, but
primarily on its role in industry. The political supremacy of the
bourgeoisie is founded on economic power. Before it manages to take over
the authority of the state, it concentrates in its hands the national
means of production; hence its specific weight. The proletariat will
possess no means of production of its own before the Social revolution.
Its social power depends upon the circumstance that the means of
production in possession of the bourgeoisie can be put into motion only
by the hands of the proletariat. From the bourgeois viewpoint, the
proletariat is also one of the means of production, forming, in
combination with the others, a unified mechanism. Yet the proletariat is
the only non-automatic part of this mechanism, and can never be made
automatic, notwithstanding all efforts. This puts the proletariat into a
position to be able to stop the functioning of the national economic
body, partially or wholly--through the medium of partial or general
strikes.
Hence it is evident that, the numerical strength of the proletariat
being equal, its importance is proportional to the mass of the means of
production it puts into motion: the proletarian of a big industrial
concern represents--other conditions being equal--a greater social unit
than an artisan's employee; a city workingman represents a greater unit
than a proletarian of the village. In other words, the political role of
the proletariat is greater in proportion as large industries predominate
over small industries, industry predominates over agriculture, and the
city over the village.
At a period in the history of Germany or England when the proletariats
of those countries formed the same percentage to the total population as
the proletariat in present day Russia, they did not possess the same
social weight as the Russian proletariat of to-day. They could not
possess it, because their objective importance in economic life was
comparatively smaller. The social weight of the cities represents the
same phenomenon. At a time when the city population of Germany formed
only 15 per cent. of the total nation, as is the case in present-day
Russia, the German cities were far from equaling our cities in economic
and political importance. The concentration of big industries and
commercial enterprises in the cities, and the establishment of closer
relations between city and country through a system of railways, has
given the modern cities an importance far exceeding the mere volume of
their population. Moreover, the growth of their importance runs ahead of
the growth of their population, and the growth of the latter runs ahead
of the natural increase of the entire population of the country. In
1848, the number of artisans, masters and their employees, in Italy was
15 per cent. of the population, the same as the percentage of the
proletariat, including artisans, in Russia of to-day. Their importance,
however, was far less than that of the Russian industrial proletariat.
The question is not, how strong the proletariat is numerically, but what
is its position in the general economy of a country.
[The author then quotes figures showing the numbers of wage-earners
and industrial proletarians in Germany, Belgium and England: in
Germany, in 1895, 12.5 millions proletarians; in Belgium 1.8
millions, or 60 per cent. of all the persons who make a living
independently; in England 12.5 millions.]
In the leading European countries, city population numerically
predominates over the rural population. Infinitely greater is its
predominance through the aggregate of means of production represented by
it, and through the qualities of its human material. The city attracts
the most energetic, able and intelligent elements of the country.
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that economic evolution--the growth of
industry, the growth of large enterprises, the growth of cities, the
growth of the proletariat, especially the growth of the industrial
proletariat--have already prepared the arena not only for the _struggle_
of the proletariat for political power, but also for the _conquest_ of
that power.
3. Here we approach the third prerequisite to Socialism, the
_dictatorship of the proletariat_.
Politics is the plane where objective prerequisites intersect with
subjective. On the basis of certain technical and socio-economic
conditions, a class puts before itself a definite task--to seize power.
In pursuing this task, it unites its forces, it gauges the forces of the
enemy, it weighs the circumstances. Yet, not even here is the
proletariat absolutely free: besides subjective moments, such as
understanding, readiness, initiative which have a logic of their own,
there are a number of objective moments interfering with the policies of
the proletariat, such are the policies of the governing classes, state
institutions (the army, the class-school, the state-church),
international relations, etc.
Let us first turn our attention to the subjective moment; let us ask,
_Is the proletariat ready for a Socialist change?_ It is not enough that
development of technique should make Socialist economy profitable from
the viewpoint of the productivity of national labor; it is not enough
that social differentiation, based on technical progress, should create
the proletariat, as a class objectively interested in Socialism. It is
of prime importance that this class should _understand_ its objective
interests. It is necessary that this class should _see_ in Socialism the
only way of its emancipation. It is necessary that it should unite into
an army powerful enough to seize governmental power in open combat.
It would be a folly to deny the necessity for the preparation of the
proletariat. Only the old Blanquists could stake their hopes in the
salutary initiative of an organization of conspirators formed
independently of the masses. Only their antipodes, the anarchists, could
build their system on a spontaneous elemental outburst of the masses
whose results nobody can foresee. When Social-Democracy speaks of
seizing power, it thinks of _a deliberate action of a revolutionary
class_.
There are Socialists-ideologists (ideologists in the wrong sense of the
word, those who turn all things upside down) who speak of preparing the
proletariat for Socialism as a problem of moral regeneration. The
proletariat, they say, and even "humanity" in general, must first free
itself from its old selfish nature; altruistic motives must first become
predominant in social life. As we are still very far from this ideal,
they contend, and as human nature changes very slowly, Socialism appears
to be a problem of remote centuries. This view seems to be very
realistic, evolutionistic, etc. It is in reality a conglomeration of
hackneyed moralistic considerations.
Those "ideologists" imagine that a Socialist psychology can be acquired
before the establishment of Socialism; that in a world ruled by
capitalism the masses can be imbued with a Socialist psychology.
Socialist psychology as here conceived should not be identified with
Socialist aspirations. The former presupposes the absence of selfish
motives in economic relations, while the latter are an outcome of the
class psychology of the proletariat. Class psychology, and Socialist
psychology in a society not split into classes, may have many common
features, yet they differ widely.
Cooeperation in the struggle of the proletariat against exploitation has
developed in the soul of the workingmen beautiful sprouts of idealism,
brotherly solidarity, a spirit of self-sacrifice. Yet those sprouts
cannot grow and blossom freely within capitalist society: individual
struggle for existence, the yawning abyss of poverty, differentiations
among the workingmen themselves, the corrupting influence of the
bourgeois parties,--all this interferes with the growth of idealism
among the masses.
However, it is a fact that, while remaining selfish as any of the lower
middle class, while not exceeding the average representative of the
bourgeois classes by the "human" value of his personality, the average
workingman learns in the school of life's experience that _his most
primitive desires and most natural wants can be satisfied only on the
debris of the capitalist order_.
If Socialism should attempt to create a new human nature within the
limits of the old world, it would be only a new edition of the old
moralistic Utopias. The task of Socialism is not to create a Socialist
psychology as a prerequisite to Socialism, but to create Socialist
conditions of human life as a prerequisite to a Socialist psychology.